Shelter
by Firestar9mm
Summary: For everyone who giggled with me thinking Leon was cute, and for the wonderful character of Claire, who reinforced that girls can do whatever they want, including protect themselves and kill the monsters.


Shelter  
  
*****  
  
Dreams were chasing across the little girl's face, causing her face to tense and her eyelashes to flutter as she reached for them and came up empty. Were they good or bad dreams? It didn't matter. They couldn't hurt her. They were just dreams...  
  
It was hot in the car, not comfortable heat, but greenhouse heat, the kind that beats through glass to your skin and presses on you like a weight. She could have gotten out-they were parked-but a car was an anchor. A car was safety. They could go someplace in this car, someplace far, far away from here.  
  
Instead she sat, still as silence, and watched the little girl struggle with her dreams, lying across the back seat like a broken doll.  
  
The real horror of the situation was churning around the older girl like waves. The little one would probably have nightmares for the rest of her life. Her innocence had been ripped violently away from her, and now she knew-there really were monsters under the bed, with dripping jaws and pointed claws, who took away girls in the middle of the night.  
  
The older girl chuckled softly to herself when she realized what she wanted. She wanted to back in the condemned town, wading in blood, smell the gunpowder, because the zombies had been defeatable opponents. She'd rather face a whole army of biological weapons than one irrational nightmare.  
  
Because once the fear got its teeth in you, it never let you go...  
  
She was startled from her thoughts by the opening of the driver's side door. It seemed loud enough to startle, if not wake, the dead.  
  
The little girl murmured something, shifting in her makeshift bed, still wearing the vest as though it were some kind of life preserver.  
  
"You okay?" he asked, handing her a warm Styrofoam cup of something.  
  
"Yeah," she lied, inhaling. "Mmm. Were you the good fairy?" She sipped, liking the choking bitterness of the coffee as it burned its way down her throat. "Didn't you get any?"  
  
He shook his head, russet forelocks flipping over his eyes. "I don't drink coffee."  
  
"And you thought you were gonna be a cop." She laughed, a short bark she hadn't thought herself capable of. It was full of pain. "Hard to trust a cop who won't drink coffee."  
  
He laughed softly. "I guess we'll never know."  
  
They both turned to the little girl, a source of distraction from their own pain. "How's she doing?" he asked.  
  
"Same. She's been sleeping the whole time." She sipped the coffee and asked the question that had been preying on her mind. "You think she's going to be okay?"  
  
He shrugged, that beautiful male shrug that meant everything and nothing. "As okay as she can be, I guess. She's a tough kid." Then he speared her with his eyes, and asked the question again. "Are you going to be okay?"  
  
She opened her mouth to lie, to say yes, and instead felt her own shoulders roll into a shrug. "I don't know."  
  
"Care to share?"  
  
She looked out the window. "I'm scared because I'm not scared. It's like it's sucking me down a piece at a time, that with every horrible thing I see, I just get more and more numb. I don't want to not be afraid of it. I don't want to be used to the horror. Does that make any sense?" she asked, blinking lashes that were starred together at him.  
  
"Yes," he said.  
  
"I'm afraid that I'm going to get so deep in I'm not going to be able to pull myself back," she said, eyes turning to the little girl in the back seat.  
  
"Then I'll pull you back," he said, in a soft voice that demanded that you respect him, that you believe. She smiled. He was giving her a promise, not out loud, but somewhere in there was a vow.  
  
I'll be there.  
  
"Good to know," she said with a tiny smile. Translate that to mean, Thank you.  
  
He nodded, returning the smile.  
  
The little girl stirred, hand a claw. The older girl took that tiny claw in her own hand, stroking it back to calm.  
  
The little one sighed, the name of her protector escaping in a breath: "Claire." She did not awaken.  
  
He smiled. "She really looks up to you, hm?"  
  
She shrugged. "I just want to keep her safe. If Chris had been there, I would have known I was safe with him. I just wanted to give her that feeling." She uncurled herself from her sitting position to stretch out her legs, the boots seeming filled with cement. "I guess that's just what everyone wants at some time, to be with someone and know you're safe, to have them tell you everything will be all right in the end."  
  
He'd been prepared to start the car, to start their escape again, but his hand left the keys and stretched across to clasp hers. She looked at him, making her face the question.  
  
He twined his fingers through hers, eyes full of a strange light.  
  
"Everything's going to be okay, Claire."  
  
She looked up at him, and suddenly her eyes were full of hot tears. She kept them back, but gave his hand a little squeeze. "I know."  
  
The smile tugged at the corner of his lips, and he let it come. She returned it.  
  
He drove one-handed to the next town, one eye on the road, and one on her.  
  
*****  
  
I wasn't going to write this, but a wandering part of my soul surprised me with a visit in the kitchen last night. She sauntered in, one hand in the pocket of her frayed shorts, and took a soda can out of the refrigerator. "Come on," she said, hopping up on the counter to look at me. "You know you want to."  
  
I did.  
  
Reviews appreciated.....S.  
*****  



End file.
